Category: Intra-Faith
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part III: Bishop Hall and the Smectymnuan Hydra
The invocations of Psalm 137 got uglier when Hall addressed a new tract to Parliament in the wake of the Root and Branch Petition. This tract drew responses from adversaries in his first category, the... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part II: Root and Branch
Like Jacob and Esau after the episode of the pottage, the family relationship of the English Church had gone quite sour by 1640, and this bitterness gave Psalm 137 its potency in the church-government... Read More
On Empowering Women through Art in South Sudan
“With art there is no barrier.” These words concluded a brief interview I had with Milcah Lalam, a woman from South Sudan who provides psychosocial rehabilitation for communities within this newly... Read More
Afghans Attack U.N. Building, Murder Workers and Each Other After Qur’an Burning
Remember Terry Jones? Not the guy from Monty Python, but the Florida pastor who threatened to burn copies of the Qur’an last August in response to the building of the Cordoba House Islamic cultu... Read More
Psalm 137 and Religious Violence, Part I: “Down with it, down with it, even to the ground”
7 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day of Jerusalem: how they said, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. 8 O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery: yea, happy shall he be tha... Read More
Averting Your Eyes: The Devastating Consequences of Ignoring Women’s Rights
I was walking down the crowded, cobblestoned streets of Jerusalem’s Old City when a bearded man with narrow eyes reached out his hand and tried to grab my breast. I did not know him. I had not... Read More
Early Christian/Non-Christian Encounters as Comparative Theological Resources: A Case in Sixteenth-Century Japan
Recent research on cross-cultural encounters in the early modern period has shown that the records of the first Europeans in eastern Asia provide us with excellent models to reflect on current issues ... Read More
Making Sense of “God’s Love”
Summer 2010. I am in Indonesia. None of my doctors are on the same page, but they all agree that something is wrong. One Saturday my shoulder freezes at the joint and I can’t lift it more than four ... Read More